


Uncharted Territory

by LookingForDroids



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ficlet, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-24 20:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: A moment of respite, after the dark.





	Uncharted Territory

They climb back to the office together.

It’s an abrupt transition. Behind, the tunnels stretch on, uncharted and unchartable. Ahead is harsh overhead lighting, stacks of paper, boxes full of transcripts and tapes. After so long with nothing to differentiate one second-minute-hour from the next but the sound of his own footsteps in the dark, Martin can’t fully fit anything so normal as a desk or office chair into the span of his existence. They seem like artifacts from a half-remembered dream, scarcely real and inscrutable in their design. Stumbling forward, he catches himself against the desk’s polished edge, feels it pressing into his palms, smooth and unyielding. He’s here. This is real. Time is passing, second by second, and the world hasn’t ended yet.

He looks back. The dark is still there. It will always be there, he thinks, in Jon’s office or down some lonesome side-street or just around a corner, waiting patiently for him to return.

And Jon is there too, sagging against a filing cabinet like it’s the only thing holding him up. He straightens when he sees Martin looking at him, and smiles, though he’s still too strange and haggard for any of it to be convincing.

“Tell me if you’re hurt,” he says. It it very carefully not a question, and there’s no compulsion to answer. In fact, it’s difficult; Martin has been cultivating distance, and it’s grown.

“I’m not,” he says, and it’s mostly true. A clock ticks somewhere. The world hasn’t ended. He’s not safe, and he’s not free, but he’s holding onto something solid from an ordinary life, and it means something to be brought back from that place. To be _needed._

“It was – bad down there,” he says, and doesn’t know what he means by it – whether it’s a solicitation of comfort or an offer of something else. 

No. That isn’t true. He knows. But Jon shakes his head in curt denial.

“Don’t talk,” he says. “Not right now. Not to me.”

Not a rebuff. A warning. Sharp enough to cut, all the same, and Martin nods, wraps distance back around himself and prepares to step away. Silence is easier, anyway, once you’re used to it – but Jon doesn’t let the silence have its say. He steps across the room, half-falls, wraps Martin in his arms as they catch each other and sink to the floor. Martin tries not to think about how thin he is beneath that jacket, and only of the human warmth in the hand that comes up to curl around the back of his head, and the heartbeat pressed against his ear. Solid. Steady. Real.

“I know it was bad,” Jon says. His breath stirs Martin’s hair, and his voice is quiet and precise, soft with something Martin almost doesn’t recognize, until he does. “You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

He’s shivering. They both are. He shifts closer, and Martin holds him tighter, offering what he can, letting himself have what he’s given: breath and heartbeat, long fingers clutching at his shirt and an angular knee pressed into his ribs, this tiny island of heat in a cold and finite world. Shared space. A different kind of silence.


End file.
